Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Sure there are no gifts, but Thanksgiving always gives me a chance to take a stop and smell the roses (or rather pecan pie) and reflect upon all the wonderful events of the year.

This has been a monumental year for Qlubb...

• we launched successfully this Fall (to our thousands of users - a big gobble, gobble!),
• we added new team members (to those late nights and weekend - a big gobble, gobble),
• we introduced new features every few weeks (to Andy and his team - a big gobble, gobble),
• we raised a significant angel round of financing (to our investors - a big gobble, gobble)

So despite the miserable economy, I am amazed at what our company has accomplished and am very excited about our future. In the beginning, I created Qlubb because I couldn't find a great solution for organizing and managing groups. Today, I am so proud of and grateful for the people and users who have taken my little idea and given it such a wonderful life.

Happy Thanksgiving, Sophia

Please nominate us for the Crunchie Awards

We've had a lot of great success helping you, our users get organized and online. If you have a moment, we would appreciate a nod for the Crunchie Awards - but only if you have the time. All that's required is to click on the graphic button below.

Thanks for all of your feedback and kind comments!

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Organizing Advice From a Professional

Dear Readers. Qlubb is all about helping groups of people get online and organized so that they can succeed. We thought it would be useful to bring in a professional, certified expert on organizing for the blog post today.

April Welch is a CPO® (certified professional organizer) who resides in WA State with her two sons and her firefighter husband. Her organizing specialties are with children/families and chronically disorganized communities.

[Qlubb] Hello April. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us.

[April] Thanks for having me!

[Qlubb] It seems everyone is so busy these days. Is this something that has always been with us or is this a new phenomenon?

[April] Interestingly, time management has always been seen as a challenge. When I work with clients most times we find that the struggle isn't in the amount of activities but rather in the habits of the individual or the tools they are trying to make work for them (but really are working against them!)

[Qlubb] Many of our users have very active lives, either participating or organizing multiple groups, clubs, organizations and activities. What are some of the special challenges of being organized when multiple people are involved?

[April] What a great question! Communication. Hands down, if you haven't figured out a way to keep everyone on board as things progress - you've probably stepped over to the dark side of chaos!

[Qlubb] What general tips do you have for people who are trying to get a group of people organized?

[April] First, ask yourself "What priority will this have in their lives?". I recently taught a filing fundamentals workshop & one of the attendees shared that she had 4 choices of what to do with her evening! I was excited she chose to commit to her paperwork dilemma that night, but it shows that when you try & pull a group together you really are competing with other priorities. Make sure you respect their time and do your best not to waste it - or they won't return the next time.

[Qlubb] Does it take a certain type of person to be successful at organizing a group? How can one get better at getting a group organized?

[April] I work from a philosophy that organization is a learned skill. That said, it takes a ton of patience, flexibility and acceptance to organize anything - whether it's an event, group or just your "me time"! Sometimes, when clients call me in for help we are working our way through the many projects they are dealing with. We often find they have skipped a step or misunderstood how to break the different things to do into tasks. I would recommend taking a step back & reviewing from time to time (especially if they feel stuck!)

[Qlubb] The holidays are fast coming upon us. Are there any special organizing tips you suggest for preparing for those holiday parties and family get togethers?

[April] Yes! Do as much as you can early on! Take a look at your calendar/planner and determine where the different chores or errands will work best. If you're hosting, check your supplies both in the kitchen/pantry but also in the guest quarters - bathrooms and bedrooms. The best story I've heard regarding a Turkey day dinner was that the host forgot to check the guest bathroom supplies and the family was carrying the ONE roll of toilet paper from bathroom to bathroom for the day! If you're traveling, begin getting the items together that you'll be taking along or creating a list of things you often pack to keep in your suitcase. Use a spot to collect the items until you're ready to pack - some clients have utilized plastic storage containers while others have simply opened up the suitcase in a corner & began dropping things in a few weeks ahead. Most importantly, find what works best for you and stick to it!

[Qlubb] Haha! That's a great story. I'll have to remember to stock up. Thanks April for imparting your words of wisdom. How can our audience reach you if they need that extra level of assistance from you?

[April] You bet! I work virtually with folks from across the US - they can look into services at my site www.simplyorganizedonline.com or they can email me directly with specific questions april@simplyorganizedonline.com.

[Qlubb] Thanks again April for your time. Good luck readers on planning for the upcoming holidays!

Qlubb Helps Families Get Organized and Online

We recently put out a press release that shows how two families are using Qlubb to help their families be more organized, have more fun and strengthen their family ties. Many thanks to the Walsh and Crowhurst families from Texas for sharing their experiences! Happy Holidays to all!

Creating Your Own Family Web Site

While many of us have a circle of friends and coworkers that we interact with regularly, for most people, the family is where people connect most deeply. But families are growing increasingly apart in this day and age with immediate family members busy with their own schedules and extended family being separated by many miles. Increasingly, many families are creating family websites to help increase communication, plan events like a reunion and have fun. We’re going to talk about creating your own family website using Qlubb, an easy to use group website that takes less than a minute to set up.

Create your Own Family Email Address
One of the most convenient first steps in improving family communication is creating a group email. With a group email list, you can send one email to smithfamily@qlubb.com and every person in the family gets the email. You don’t have to type in everybody’s email address every time and in addition, you can let the family members manage their email addresses themselves – like for instance if they change their email address.

Create Your Own Family Website
Creating your own family’s space is a great way to centralize information. If you use just email, you will soon find that information gets fragmented and it’s hard to know who has the latest information. More useless emails tend to flow around when there isn’t a central place for people to disseminate information. With a central website you can publish a family calendar so everyone knows what everyone else is doing and also what the future events are. By creating a central website, like http://smithfamily.qlubb.com everyone knows where to get on the same page.

What’s key is to have a secure site that has an open administration model. By enabling family members to contribute easily and frequently – otherwise the most tech person is stuck with making all of the edits.

Shared To Do List
Whether planning who has what chores to do, or who is doing what for the upcoming family reunion, shared to-do lists (or shared sign up sheets) are a great way to do the planning up front and to assign responsibilities. With shared sign up sheets, all of the tasks can be laid out for everyone to see and for people to sign up or assign others as needed. Reminders can “nag” people to get things done. Shared to-do lists help coordinate activities much better than traditional paper and pen or even email.

Photo Sharing
Sharing the photos from the latest vacation trip or graduation is a great way to keep the family engaged and excited. Being able to tie photos to specific events help people find the photo albums quickly and easily that they want to view. Slideshows help make photo viewing interesting. Comments on photos add to the fun.

File Sharing
When coordinating, it’s hard to know who has the latest version of the file. By keeping it in a central location everyone knows where the latest is. Also, putting backups of important files on the Web, in a secure location is a good idea in general.

It's Easy
There are dozens of other Web features that are helpful to families but these are the very basics. By starting a Website on Qlubb, you can quickly and easily get your family online, communicating, coordinating and sharing as never before. One family said before using Qlubb that they used to do all of their reunion planning last minute or worse, once they all got there. Qlubb has helped them get organized much more easily and quickly and has helped them strengthen their extended family bonds. Try out Qlubb for getting your family online. It's quick, it's easy and it's great for the family.

Why Use A Social Collaboration Solution For Your Group - 6 reasons?

As we engage with more of our users at Qlubb, a provider of social collaboration Web tools, we’ve been seeing a great variety of uses for social collaboration software. There are almost as many different types of groups as there are different types of people. From playgroups, to dog walking clubs to extended families to professional associations to video game clubs to crisis teams, we’ve been finding people getting together to do things that we never knew existed. Yet, despite the diversity of activity, groups of people who want to accomplish something, have many common needs. They use social collaboration in many of the same ways to succeed. We listed just a few of them

Upfront planning – when you already know your future event schedule, it helps to put it all in one place so that everyone can see and interact with it. We have many groups put up their whole half year or year’s worth of activities up on the website and let the reminders tell them when they need to do anything. With just an hour of work, all of the year’s management and overhead is all but taken care of.

Reducing email and miscommunication – one of the biggest headaches for anyone organizer is piecing together conversations that occur over email lists. While email lists are great for single broadcasts, it’s terrible for collaboration. Everyone gets cc’d on emails and people lose track quickly of what is the latest and greatest information. By moving many of the functions onto the Web, unnecessary and confusing email is nearly eliminated. Number one rule for anybody in the group should be check the website first before asking.

Saving paper – A surprising number of groups were still in the Stone Age before using Qlubb, even printing invitations and requesting RSVP’s by mail. With Web tools, you can let the computer do most of the work for you, handling the distribution of vital material and tracking responses, up to the second. It’s much less cost, much less effort and better for the environment to move to social collaboration tools.

Get everyone on the same page – Most groups tough it out using email, however, the most up to date information becomes fragmented in individual people’s inboxes or personal documents. Broadcasting updates often cause email overload and everybody begins to tune out. Whenever you are collaborating with a group of people, it’s always valuable to have a central place where you know everything is up to date.

Getting organized – Planning and organizing without easy-to-use tools is a nightmare using just email, word processing and spreadsheets. Keeping an up-to-date file is hard without a place to consolidate the latest edits. If multiple people are editing the same document, then anybody runs the risk of editing an out-of-date copy. With social collaboration solutions, you can consolidate files, consolidate your calendar of events and consolidate sign up sheets. The first action becomes working with the site rather than firing off an email or doing a search among a sea of emails.

Strengthen community – Physical communities interact in real-life. Interacting virtually helps supplement the interactions. Some interactions work best in real time and some interactions work better asynchronously. Whether it’s letting people know about your latest accomplishment, or offering free tickets because you can’t make a performance or just passing an important word around, social collaboration tools help communities share information.

Easy-to-use social collaboration solutions that encourage contribution invariably create and strengthen the binds that form the community.

Email Support for File Attachments

As of midnight last night, Qlubb supports file attachments in emails. You can now send attachments either through your preferred email client or through the Qlubb provided Web interface. The limit for a given attachment is 3MB (we are a free service after all). You can store up to 50MB of attachments for your Qlubb. I hope you enjoy using file attachments!

Nominate Qlubb For The Mashable Open Web Awards

All you have to do is enter your email address below to nominate. As always, thanks for your support!